Monday, February 09, 2004
Chile and Argentina- Am I there yet?
It can be odd to travel to a new place on a motorcycle.
It takes some time for your vision to adjust. Once you have stopped, dismounted, pulled helmet and gloves you have to take a second for your mind to comprehend that the world is not still disappearing beyond the scope of vision of your helmeted view. Looking over a valley or an abandoned dirt path, your mind compensates for your new ecstasies and pulls the corners of the horizon in. You blink, shake it off and refocus to find the same horizon bending in past your brain. This usually persists for about 2 minutes before the eyes and brain realize you are sitting in a cafe sipping a pisco or Malbec and no long bearing down on then.
Sometimes even after clarity of vision, you are still left feeling altered by the travel. You started in one place, and stopped in another; but you have trouble realizing that you are actually in a new place. Participating. If I had one complaint about Machu Picchu it would be that it was too perfect. Things were too clear and as promised, not much different than looking at a chotochrome slide of the ˜original '.
After appearing from the frontier of Bolivia into Chile there was no doubt of where I was. For one thing, when you are crawling across muddy deserts (?) at 10 mph monitoring every twist of the throttle so as not to not expend any more gasoline than absolutely necessary and smoking to fend of thirst, you know exactly where you are ,in it deep, thick description. Usually I wish my vision/ perception were tweaked when crossing to and from border towns but the Bolivia/Chile line in the sand was a welcome inconvenience. Papers to sign, people to pay, respect to feign, curbs, windows, trucks, wires running around ,the end of the line for those God damned train tracks , someplace.
Chile looks like Bolivia man.
Ha-ha, let 's find some gas and get the hell out of here.
What 's the hurry? We are here.
Where?
Out of where we were before.
Let 's find some gas.
And some chapstick ,
Out of the Salar and into the Atacama of North Chile. The books say it has not rained here in all of time. Jim is excited to be here fosome reason. For the 4th time of this entire trip we decide to ride into the night and just stop when we are tired. The sun lingers down here for hours after nightfall this far south. Midnight breaks. We gas up without speaking and ride deeper into the desert.
There is nothing out there that will catch us off guard in the dark ,Nothing.
I knew what he was talking about. The main reasons you don 't ride at night are the animals and the drunks, but, of course, drunks are not strictly night creatures.
I tell you, they always find a way to get by down here ,always. Chinchillas live in sawdust ,camels ,scorpions.
Never rained, no life whatsoever.
But here we are, passing a boxed wine in Chile to each other from our sleeping bags staring up into stars. With no moon to steal the show, the stars give it a go and light the desert splendidly. I really love open air camping beyond the sanctioned areas set aside and cleaned up for tourists. It reminds me of when I was a kid getting buzzed on chewing tobacco and cheap Vodka with my pals in the woods of Connecticut. We would walk into the fenced countryside and try to get lost and maybe even a little nervous.
I don 't know the way back to school!
Me neither ,I think it is back towards the really bright star.
Which one?
That one right next to the tree that looks like a big-titted lady.
That is a plane ASS!
We are lost!
NICE!
Like two worms lost on the pavement at high noon, we wake to find the desert sun cooking us alive in our sleeping bags. Jim boils up some water for a steaming cup of Gatorade and we are back on the road with the mission to reach Mendoza, Argentina by nightfall. Legs slung around my crash-bars and a jacket supporting my lower back the bike rides like a couch across the endless expanses. After about two hours of screaming across tarmac without encountering any form of life we see some activity on the horizon.
In the night, an 18 wheeler lost it, drove off the road into the desert and flipped its bed, throwing thousands of bags of Purina Dog Chow across the barren landscape.
HA- life always find a way down here.
This is the second time we have come across flipped trucks in the desert. The first was in Peru, where I chicken truck and a mango truck collided and littered the sands with feathers and mango. Out of nowhere people began to appear to help themselves to the fat of the land ,mangos scattered on dawns highway ripening; a sight to see.
We cross into Argentina without much hassle and make our way to Mendoza with light to spare. Hungry and thirsty we park outside a restaurant with some covered outdoor seating and order some beers and a parrilla. Sitting there in the shade of the umbrella watching the afternoon strollers return to work after siesta I can 't help but feel disconnected somehow. Not there ,defiantly not participating ,just watching, like a TV.
The waiter returns with a platter of meat still cooking over a metal box filled with red coals. 2 sweet sausages, a fat black blood sausage, half a chicken, a porterhouse cut, a flack steak, 6 inches of tender ribs and a pile of entrails. He excuses himself and returns with another steaming pile of farm for Jim, a basket of warm breads and two tiny salads. Self consciously we begin to wrangle in our meal. With a sausage hanging from my chops, I watch as finely groomed families in neat Izods and pressed summer clothes stroll by, delicately licking ice creams. They offer the travelers salutations , Buen Provecho.
Then it occurs to me where these feelings of separation are coming from.
We are the dirtiest and poorest people in the city. The roles are reversed. We have reentered the 1st world and are still covered with the 3rd world. It has been over a week since we have showered and it shows. Our clothes are torn and covered in motor oil and mud from 3 countries, I have sand in my ears and hair and to top it all off, here come the meat sweats.
We find the cheapest hotel in town, park our bikes and begin to unload. All clothes go off to the cleaners and we rock-paper-scissors for who showers first. While I am brushing the thick mortar off my teeth I find a little present the owner of a campsite 's son left me in my bag; a huge blackish purple chunk of something stuffed inside a film canister. Mucho Gusto. I designed an apparatus and got after it immediately. Slowly but surely we are starting to feel at one with our new surroundings.
I feel like we are cheating, I mean, things are just too nice and easy...right?
I don 't know man, I think we earned a little cushy ,
At the BMW shop where I bought some new brake pads, fluids, etc one of the mechanics told me that at 9pm there was going to be flat-track motorcycle racing at the stadium.
Is very fast ,many people crash.
Been there done that...would be good to see what I actually look like flopping across the dirt.
See you there?
I think you will.
Dressed in fresh clothes and degreased hair, we arrived at the track an hour or so before the races start.
Jim makes the of-handed suggestion that we should tell the announcer we are Americans that drove down here just for this event, ˜we will be celebrities. '
A couple of tugs off the flask and a few fortified cigarettes later the idea begins to resonate.
If you see me waving for you to come down, go get the bikes ready and meet me at the back gate , I tell Jim as I make my way threw the rows of race fans.
I have learned that in Latin America that if you conduct yourself as if you have more information than the official standing in your path you can generally get what you want. I simply walked up to the men guarding the entrance to the track and told them that I had an announcement to make. They asked to see my identification and with a huff I passed my AAA International Drivers Licence and held my hand out for its immediate return. The gates opened and I staggered across the track, past the pits and over to the announcers booth with the great news that I have arrived.
Hola, me llamo Xavier y yo soy un bombero voluntario de Nueva York que maneje hasta aqui para este evento.
SENORES Y SENORITAS, WE HAVE A GUEST FROM THE USA WHO RODE HERE TO BE WITH US!!! ESPEEEEEEDWAAAAAYYY!!!
With that I threw out the signal to Jim (who was jumping up and down in the crowd waving his helmet) and departed before anyone could ask more questions. Back in the stands Jim is not so sure the announcement meant we could actually ride the track; I however insisted and just like that we had the gates open.
Dude I don 't know about this.
It 's gonna be great.
I just don 't want to get stopped and totally embarrassed.
Nobody gives a shit ,its good entertainment.
Just don 't crash man ,
I rule ,!
The 250 cc 2-stroke heat finishes filing off the track with a cloud of blue smoke and we make our debut appearance.
LOS GRINGOS RAPIDOS ,ESPEEEEDWAAAAY.
It was a great moment; I wish I had given my camera to someone to document. Thousands of race fans on their feet cheering us on. Do they know we crashed the party? Were we going to get arrested? Can I stand on my seat and steer with one foot on the bars? The dirt is loose but I keep the throttle pinned right up until the wall banks. Faster, faster, faster! Downshift, leg drawn, lean, lean, lean! The apex and- PUNCH It! Just like the pros, dirt goes flying into the crowd , we are all very happy to be together like this.
On our third lap Jim starts to motion for us to get out while the getting is good but the organizers of the race upped the stakes by releasing the freebies' truck to throw ice cream into the stands. Standing in the bed of a vintage ˜Lil Red ', 5 beauties dressed in spandex minis with Nestle 's Helados ' written across the butts, join Jim and I on the track.
Mmmmm ,ice cream.
Franky takes aim and opens her up. Within seconds I am on them- my tongue is waving and I am getting pelted with ice cream bars.
Give it to me!
Waving an ice cream around at the crowd like a sword I continue to demand the sweetness.
SHIT ,brake lights!
I swerve to avoid a full on insurance nightmare but clip the end of the truck and go flying off course into the pits. Racer X will not go down like this!
I renter the field to claim poll position but am now getting pelted by ice cream from the crowd as well; too much sugar for one man to handle, so we cut out.
Jim wants to park the bikes out in front of the stadium to reap the benefits of celebrity, but I am feeling shy all of a sudden. I decide to head back to the hotel to eat some ice cream and relish the fact that in a day I will be in a new place, trying to realize my new surroundings; looking to find ways to participate in the moment.
Wine country should be nice.
posted by Xavier - RoadWarrior on 8:58 AM
It takes some time for your vision to adjust. Once you have stopped, dismounted, pulled helmet and gloves you have to take a second for your mind to comprehend that the world is not still disappearing beyond the scope of vision of your helmeted view. Looking over a valley or an abandoned dirt path, your mind compensates for your new ecstasies and pulls the corners of the horizon in. You blink, shake it off and refocus to find the same horizon bending in past your brain. This usually persists for about 2 minutes before the eyes and brain realize you are sitting in a cafe sipping a pisco or Malbec and no long bearing down on then.
Sometimes even after clarity of vision, you are still left feeling altered by the travel. You started in one place, and stopped in another; but you have trouble realizing that you are actually in a new place. Participating. If I had one complaint about Machu Picchu it would be that it was too perfect. Things were too clear and as promised, not much different than looking at a chotochrome slide of the ˜original '.
After appearing from the frontier of Bolivia into Chile there was no doubt of where I was. For one thing, when you are crawling across muddy deserts (?) at 10 mph monitoring every twist of the throttle so as not to not expend any more gasoline than absolutely necessary and smoking to fend of thirst, you know exactly where you are ,in it deep, thick description. Usually I wish my vision/ perception were tweaked when crossing to and from border towns but the Bolivia/Chile line in the sand was a welcome inconvenience. Papers to sign, people to pay, respect to feign, curbs, windows, trucks, wires running around ,the end of the line for those God damned train tracks , someplace.
Chile looks like Bolivia man.
Ha-ha, let 's find some gas and get the hell out of here.
What 's the hurry? We are here.
Where?
Out of where we were before.
Let 's find some gas.
And some chapstick ,
Out of the Salar and into the Atacama of North Chile. The books say it has not rained here in all of time. Jim is excited to be here fosome reason. For the 4th time of this entire trip we decide to ride into the night and just stop when we are tired. The sun lingers down here for hours after nightfall this far south. Midnight breaks. We gas up without speaking and ride deeper into the desert.
There is nothing out there that will catch us off guard in the dark ,Nothing.
I knew what he was talking about. The main reasons you don 't ride at night are the animals and the drunks, but, of course, drunks are not strictly night creatures.
I tell you, they always find a way to get by down here ,always. Chinchillas live in sawdust ,camels ,scorpions.
Never rained, no life whatsoever.
But here we are, passing a boxed wine in Chile to each other from our sleeping bags staring up into stars. With no moon to steal the show, the stars give it a go and light the desert splendidly. I really love open air camping beyond the sanctioned areas set aside and cleaned up for tourists. It reminds me of when I was a kid getting buzzed on chewing tobacco and cheap Vodka with my pals in the woods of Connecticut. We would walk into the fenced countryside and try to get lost and maybe even a little nervous.
I don 't know the way back to school!
Me neither ,I think it is back towards the really bright star.
Which one?
That one right next to the tree that looks like a big-titted lady.
That is a plane ASS!
We are lost!
NICE!
Like two worms lost on the pavement at high noon, we wake to find the desert sun cooking us alive in our sleeping bags. Jim boils up some water for a steaming cup of Gatorade and we are back on the road with the mission to reach Mendoza, Argentina by nightfall. Legs slung around my crash-bars and a jacket supporting my lower back the bike rides like a couch across the endless expanses. After about two hours of screaming across tarmac without encountering any form of life we see some activity on the horizon.
In the night, an 18 wheeler lost it, drove off the road into the desert and flipped its bed, throwing thousands of bags of Purina Dog Chow across the barren landscape.
HA- life always find a way down here.
This is the second time we have come across flipped trucks in the desert. The first was in Peru, where I chicken truck and a mango truck collided and littered the sands with feathers and mango. Out of nowhere people began to appear to help themselves to the fat of the land ,mangos scattered on dawns highway ripening; a sight to see.
We cross into Argentina without much hassle and make our way to Mendoza with light to spare. Hungry and thirsty we park outside a restaurant with some covered outdoor seating and order some beers and a parrilla. Sitting there in the shade of the umbrella watching the afternoon strollers return to work after siesta I can 't help but feel disconnected somehow. Not there ,defiantly not participating ,just watching, like a TV.
The waiter returns with a platter of meat still cooking over a metal box filled with red coals. 2 sweet sausages, a fat black blood sausage, half a chicken, a porterhouse cut, a flack steak, 6 inches of tender ribs and a pile of entrails. He excuses himself and returns with another steaming pile of farm for Jim, a basket of warm breads and two tiny salads. Self consciously we begin to wrangle in our meal. With a sausage hanging from my chops, I watch as finely groomed families in neat Izods and pressed summer clothes stroll by, delicately licking ice creams. They offer the travelers salutations , Buen Provecho.
Then it occurs to me where these feelings of separation are coming from.
We are the dirtiest and poorest people in the city. The roles are reversed. We have reentered the 1st world and are still covered with the 3rd world. It has been over a week since we have showered and it shows. Our clothes are torn and covered in motor oil and mud from 3 countries, I have sand in my ears and hair and to top it all off, here come the meat sweats.
We find the cheapest hotel in town, park our bikes and begin to unload. All clothes go off to the cleaners and we rock-paper-scissors for who showers first. While I am brushing the thick mortar off my teeth I find a little present the owner of a campsite 's son left me in my bag; a huge blackish purple chunk of something stuffed inside a film canister. Mucho Gusto. I designed an apparatus and got after it immediately. Slowly but surely we are starting to feel at one with our new surroundings.
I feel like we are cheating, I mean, things are just too nice and easy...right?
I don 't know man, I think we earned a little cushy ,
At the BMW shop where I bought some new brake pads, fluids, etc one of the mechanics told me that at 9pm there was going to be flat-track motorcycle racing at the stadium.
Is very fast ,many people crash.
Been there done that...would be good to see what I actually look like flopping across the dirt.
See you there?
I think you will.
Dressed in fresh clothes and degreased hair, we arrived at the track an hour or so before the races start.
Jim makes the of-handed suggestion that we should tell the announcer we are Americans that drove down here just for this event, ˜we will be celebrities. '
A couple of tugs off the flask and a few fortified cigarettes later the idea begins to resonate.
If you see me waving for you to come down, go get the bikes ready and meet me at the back gate , I tell Jim as I make my way threw the rows of race fans.
I have learned that in Latin America that if you conduct yourself as if you have more information than the official standing in your path you can generally get what you want. I simply walked up to the men guarding the entrance to the track and told them that I had an announcement to make. They asked to see my identification and with a huff I passed my AAA International Drivers Licence and held my hand out for its immediate return. The gates opened and I staggered across the track, past the pits and over to the announcers booth with the great news that I have arrived.
Hola, me llamo Xavier y yo soy un bombero voluntario de Nueva York que maneje hasta aqui para este evento.
SENORES Y SENORITAS, WE HAVE A GUEST FROM THE USA WHO RODE HERE TO BE WITH US!!! ESPEEEEEEDWAAAAAYYY!!!
With that I threw out the signal to Jim (who was jumping up and down in the crowd waving his helmet) and departed before anyone could ask more questions. Back in the stands Jim is not so sure the announcement meant we could actually ride the track; I however insisted and just like that we had the gates open.
Dude I don 't know about this.
It 's gonna be great.
I just don 't want to get stopped and totally embarrassed.
Nobody gives a shit ,its good entertainment.
Just don 't crash man ,
I rule ,!
The 250 cc 2-stroke heat finishes filing off the track with a cloud of blue smoke and we make our debut appearance.
LOS GRINGOS RAPIDOS ,ESPEEEEDWAAAAY.
It was a great moment; I wish I had given my camera to someone to document. Thousands of race fans on their feet cheering us on. Do they know we crashed the party? Were we going to get arrested? Can I stand on my seat and steer with one foot on the bars? The dirt is loose but I keep the throttle pinned right up until the wall banks. Faster, faster, faster! Downshift, leg drawn, lean, lean, lean! The apex and- PUNCH It! Just like the pros, dirt goes flying into the crowd , we are all very happy to be together like this.
On our third lap Jim starts to motion for us to get out while the getting is good but the organizers of the race upped the stakes by releasing the freebies' truck to throw ice cream into the stands. Standing in the bed of a vintage ˜Lil Red ', 5 beauties dressed in spandex minis with Nestle 's Helados ' written across the butts, join Jim and I on the track.
Mmmmm ,ice cream.
Franky takes aim and opens her up. Within seconds I am on them- my tongue is waving and I am getting pelted with ice cream bars.
Give it to me!
Waving an ice cream around at the crowd like a sword I continue to demand the sweetness.
SHIT ,brake lights!
I swerve to avoid a full on insurance nightmare but clip the end of the truck and go flying off course into the pits. Racer X will not go down like this!
I renter the field to claim poll position but am now getting pelted by ice cream from the crowd as well; too much sugar for one man to handle, so we cut out.
Jim wants to park the bikes out in front of the stadium to reap the benefits of celebrity, but I am feeling shy all of a sudden. I decide to head back to the hotel to eat some ice cream and relish the fact that in a day I will be in a new place, trying to realize my new surroundings; looking to find ways to participate in the moment.
Wine country should be nice.
posted by Xavier - RoadWarrior on 8:58 AM
